How to Start Blogging and Earn Money Online

If you are really interested to start blogging with the purpose of earning some income down the road, here’s a quick guide you may follow along as you start from scratch.

Before everything else, evaluate yourself and know your reasons why. Ask these questions to yourself:
Am I you ready for this?
Do I consider this as my long term commitment?
Will I be able to focus on this?

From my own experience, it’s very easy to get bored and distracted along the way.

What are your reasons why you want to do this?
Is it for your family?
Do you really need to earn extra income?
Do you want to get rich online?

Do you have the basic skills as well as the basic equipments to start this endeavor?

Of course if you’re reading this, it is expected that you have a PC/Laptop and a good internet connection.

Make sure you’re confident with your answers. You don’t want to start something today only to abandon it tomorrow. Start something today that will reward you in the future.

Stop stressing about the money. You don’t need big capital here.

If you are badly in need of money and have the writing skills to offer, then go to upwork.com and apply as a freelance provider.

Do I Need a Website?

No matter what route you want to follow, either blogging or marketing things online you need to set up a website.

Keep this in mind: A website is your strong foundation especially if you’re aiming for a long term online business.

Moreover, a website is required if you’re applying for a Google adsense account. Also, it’s much advantageous to have your own website should you decide to do affiliate marketing (promoting other people’s products).

If you go freelancing you may not need to beyond this guide but if you want a site where you can create and show off your portfolio then it’s a plus point for you.

Pick a Niche or Topic

Choose the topic where you want to build your blog or website to. If you’re a business owner, a network marketer, a product promoter, or an aspiring professional blogger then you should already know what topic you want to target.

Don’t have a topic yet?

In the internet marketing world, there’s a term they call as “niche“. A niche is a focused, targetable part of a certain market.

For example, you want to blog about stocks or investments you can drill down and target a more focused niche such as forex trading tips, real estate investing, and options trading.

I’ve seen a lot of free blogger blogs that are mostly created around general topics such as sports, entertainment, technology and gadgets. Website owners claim to be making at least a hundred dollars a month with adsense. The good news is you can be making more money by drilling down into a more focused sub-niches.

For your start, just choose a niche that you know you can write about or at least have an idea.

Start Creating Your Website and Make it Live

Now, you decide whether you want to create your website for free or you want to buy your own domain and webhosting.

How to Create a Website for Free

Alright then, we’re going to use free blogging platform here. There are hundreds of free blogging platforms online but for simplicity sake here are two most popular and most trusted: Blogger.com and WordPress.com.

Namecheap is the best when it comes to registering your domains. This is an established domain name provider and is in operation worldwide.

As much as possible avoid local domain providers especially if they’re not yet established and has no proven track record. It’s common observation that many new companies trying to operate as domain providers go out of business just after a few years. Buying your domain from them may severely affect your blog when they suddenly stop operating.

Step 2. Sign up for a webhost.

I recommend looking for webhost providers that has an easy to use cPanel and will allow you to access and manage your files. The cPanel dashboard is where you manage your website’s files and programs.

Using WordPress is easy as using your new iPhone. If you instinctively knew how to use your iPhone when you first bought it, then in the same way you can easily get acquainted with using WordPress to build your site.

That’s it. You can now start writing and publish your first article. If you are confident enough, share your first post on Facebook and other social media sites.

When you have enough traffic (web visitors), you may start monetizing it. Here’s a quick guide on how to monetize your blog: How to Monetize Your Blog

Becoming Popular and Privacy Concerns

You may ask, “Do I have to make known my real identity when blogging?“.

Quick answer: It’s not necessary.

Depending on your location and the type of niche you want to blog about, making your real identity known has advantage and disadvantage.

As for me, I prefer to be anonymous… for personal reasons and privacy sake. You may choose to be anonymous if you just want to blog and it’s not a requirement for you to become popular.

On the other hand, you can choose to make yourself popular… become a respected blogger, a trusted internet marketer, make great connections and collaborate with the big IM names out there, and get rich in no time.